HMS Roebuck was a fifth-rate warship in the Royal Navy which, under the command of William Dampier, carried the first British scientific expedition to Australia in 1699. It sank in early 1701. The wreck of the ship has since been located by a team from the WA Maritime Museum at a site on the coast of Ascension Island where it foundered more than 300 years ago.
Construction and early service Roebuck was built by Snellgrove at Wapping, East London, and launched on 17 April 1690 during the reign of William III and Mary II as one of 12 purpose-built fireships. It carried 8 guns, was 292 tons (builder's measure), 96 ft (29 m) long, and 25.5 ft (8 m) wide. In June 1690 Roebuck was present at the Battle of Beachy Head. Around 1695 the ship was upgraded and listed as a 26-gun fifth-rate. Though plans and models of similar ships survive, being a relatively lowly vessel at its time of construction, no contemporary plans of Roebuck itself have been found. This lack of detail has resulted in considerable disagreement until recently about the vessel's appearance. As a result, only notional images have appeared in artwork and on postage stamps.
Voyage of discovery
After a period of relative obscurity, Roebuck was placed under the command of William Dampier in July 1698. This anomalous appointment of a former buccaneer to the command of one of King William's ships is explained by Dampier's growing reputation as he travelled widely and exhibited the famous tattooed Prince Jeoly and his mother. Purchased during his first circumnavigation, they had been described in a broadsheet from 1691 to 1692 as a "just wonder of the age". This popularity translated into greater recognition among academics, seafarers, politicians and royalty following publication of his remarkable travelogue, A New Voyage Round the World, in 1697. His acquaintance with influential men such as the recently retired naval administrator Samuel Pepys is evident from the following entry of the diarist John Evelyn on 16 August 1698: "I dined with Mr Pepys, where was Captain Dampier, who had been a famous buccaneer, had brought hither the painted prince Job [Jeoly], and printed a relation of his very strange adventure. ... He was now going abroad again by the king’s encouragement, who furnished a ship of 290 tons. He seemed a more modest man than one would imagine by relation of the crew he had associated with". Roebuck, the naval ship referred to here, was a replacement for Jolly Prize which Dampier found totally unsuited for his plans to search for Terra Australis and to examine the then uncharted eastern coast of New Holland (Australia) via Cape Horn, a notoriously difficult and dangerous route.
Outbound to Terra Australis
Having made Roebuck ready too late in the season to take his preferred route via Cape Horn, Dampier sailed from England on 14 January 1699 for the Cape of Good Hope. Trouble, centring on acrimony between Dampier and his first lieutenant, George Fisher, divided the ship. They were apparently "behaving equally as boors without a spark of dignity or self-respect ... alternately drinking together, back-biting one another to their confidants, and breaking into personal abuse and even fisticuffs in presence of the crew". A state of indiscipline ensued, and en route Fisher was caned by Dampier, clapped in irons and confined to his quarters. The crew was divided on the matter and, concerned at the possibility of mutiny, Dampier had Fisher sent ashore at Bahia in Brazil, where he was imprisoned for a time before making his way home. At the Cape of Good Hope, Dampier found the variation in compass readings there anomalous, stating in his journal "These things, I confess, did puzzle me—indeed were most shocking to me." Admiral William Henry Smyth, subsequently made the comment that, "though the local magnetic attraction in ships had fallen under the notice of seamen, he [Dampier] was among the first to lead the way to its investigation, since the facts that 'stumbled' him at the Cape of Good Hope, respecting the variations of the compass, excited the mind of [Matthew] Flinders, his ardent admirer, to study the anomaly." Continuing on after leaving the Cape of Good Hope, Dampier first made landfall in August 1699 on the Australian continent at the place he subsequently named Shark Bay in Western Australia. There and at places further north such as Lagrange Bay, just south of what is now known as Broome in Roebuck Bay, he described and collected many specimens, including shells, subsequently earning the title "Australia's first natural historian". After calling in to Timor in November, Dampier sailed to the north-west cape of New Guinea in the vicinity of present-day Selat Dampier, West Papua. There he sent his men ashore at a "small woody island" he called Cockle Island. His men brought back many giant clam shells. They then sailed around the northern part of New Guinea, naming Nova Britannia. The passage between those two islands, Dampier Strait, was subsequently named after him.
Return voyage and shipwreck
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